Embattled Vavra Says People Need Massage Parlors

February 03, 1985|by DAN FRICKER, Sunday Call-Chronicle

Dallas Ray Vavra was born to hard-working Czechoslovakian immigrants, raised on a 460-acre dairy farm in Nebraska and was among 21 in his 1970 graduating class, served 7 1/2 years in the Navy aboard nuclear submarines, earned a correspondence degree in nuclear engineering and worked at nuclear power plants throughout the country.

So how did this 32-year-old with the American Dream background and a home in the conservative, coal-region town of Nanticoke, Luzerne County, become the owner of two water bed stores and three massage parlors, including one in East Allen Township, the target of a state police investigation and raid and a man facing trial next month in Northampton County court on charges of promoting prostitution?

"Okay, well, I get very offensive when a person calls it a massage parlor," Vavra, known to his friends as Ray, said during a recent interview in the Olde World Inn in East Allen Township. "But that's okay. Massage business, okay? I guess you can say I'm a very amorous individual, okay.

"Going way back to high school, okay, many times, 'cause we had such a small team and stuff like this, we didn't have what's referred to as a trainer. So the individual guys many times would take care of problems. And I was one of the few chosen to go to Kramer's School on training, where I learned all about the muscles and the benefits of massage and circulation and stuff like this. So that's what basically got me into it."

Tomorrow, a hearing will be held in Northampton County court on East Allen's effort to close Vavra's Close Encounters Health Club at 6397 Airport Road. The township claims that Vavra did not have an occupancy permit when he opened the establishment June 19.

On March 11, Vavra is scheduled to be tried on three counts of promoting prostitution at his club in East Allen. The charges stem from the arrests of Donna Marie Badosky, 24, and Lovette Luisi, 37, the Close Encounters masseuse and manager, respectively, charged with prostitution during a state police investigation last summer.

If convicted, Vavra says he will appeal. An appellate court decision could set a precedent in a state where the legality of massaging the genitals of customers, a common practice in massage parlors and the one that led to the arrests, has been tested only in county courts.

Despite the impending trial, Vavra said he is opening two more massage parlors. At first, he said, both would be in the Lehigh Valley. Later, he said one will be in the York Valley, York County, and the other in the Lehigh Valley. They will open in March or April, he said.

"I can't tell you," Vavra said when he was asked where they will be. "Once I get the leases signed, you'll get an invitation to the grand opening."

On this night, Vavra looks more like a rancher than the owner of a chain of massage parlors. He is wearing jeans and a fleece-lined jean jacket, sweater and cowboy boots. His thick sandy-brown hair and small moustache on a pudgy face give him a young appearance and belie his 6-foot height. Tinted, gold-rimmed aviator glasses, two rings and a Playboy pendant on a short gold chain add sparkle to his attire.

Vavra is wary at first, then begins to talk freely.

His mother died when he was 2 1/2 . He was raised by his father, who died six years ago, and his paternal grandmother, who turned 98 on Dec. 27.

"She is the one who I guess you'd say I've gotten most of my upbringing from," Vavra said. "I come from the old school where you open the door for a lady. You treat a woman as a lady until she proves different. I've come to the philosophy that every individual, male or female, is perfect until they prove me incorrect."

Five days after his graduation from high school, Vavra says, he found himself in Navy boot camp in San Diego. He had enlisted to get an education he knew his father could not afford to provide.

Serving aboard the nuclear-powered guided missile submarine, USS Daniel Webster, then aboard the fast-attack submarine, Archerfish, Vavra says he earned a degree in nuclear engineering from the Navy and through correspondence courses at San Diego State University.

In 1976, after his discharge, Vavra says he joined General Dynamics in New London, Conn., where he worked on Trident submarines. It was the first a series of jobs as a nuclear engineer, Vavra says, a series that eventually led him to the Bechtel Corp. and a position as a quality control engineer in Pennsylvania Power & Light Co.'s nuclear power plant in Berwick, Columbia County.

"I felt there was a need, not only physiological but psychological, for a professional massage business," Vavra said, "not a massage parlor but a massage business, okay. A massage parlor is nothing more than sex, okay . . .

"Many professional masseuses and masseurs are almost like psychologists, like a bartender. Many people who come to establishments, all these people want is to be able to relate to someone, to be able to talk to them, be able to have someone listen to their problems."